At the College of William and Mary, Rob holds joint appointments with the Department of Economics and the School of Marine Science. Additionally he is a faculty affiliate in the Environmental Science and Policy Program and the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy. Rob has been a visiting professor at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany; the Institute of Environmental Economics and World Trade, University of Hannover, Germany; and in the Center for Economic Research, University of the Balearic Islands, Spain. His teaching interests include environmental economics and environmental policy. His current research focuses on environmental and natural resource economics, welfare economics, and applied econometrics.

He is a past member of the Science Advisory Board for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce). He has served on the editorial board of Marine Resource Economics and has been awarded research support from the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Commerce, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is the recipient of the Alumni Fellowship Award and the Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence.